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The Last of Us 2 (Coming June 19th)

Started by Sin Agog, May 06, 2020, 11:54:15 PM

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Zetetic

Quote from: popcorn on July 02, 2020, 12:49:05 AM
Dunno what to make of that really. You could say the same thing about reading all the Stephen King novels.
Well, yes, pretty much. Interactivity and the playing out makes it a bit different - fundamentally hard to distance yourself from the material. (Which is broadly a compliment to TLoU-reading-a-script type games - they're engaging in ways that the script or a film are not.)

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on July 02, 2020, 01:08:51 AM
Well, yes, pretty much. Interactivity and the playing out makes it a bit different - fundamentally hard to distance yourself from the material. (Which is broadly a compliment to TLoU-reading-a-script type games - they're engaging in ways that the script or a film are not.)

That just isn't my experience, though, as I said in my post. I don't think I really feel "closer" or more involved in a story in a game than I do in a book. It feels, on paper, like you should do. You are on the holodeck! 

But I don't think I do really. Maybe everyone else does. Perhaps I'm a psychopath.

Zetetic

I did wonder about whether you find any drama emotionally engaging, or if you're always distanced by the fiction.

I didn't really mean closer to the characters, but closer to the... facts of the story? Struggling to express myself, and I guess part of the stupid-backlash reveals that you can't bank on being able to drag people along your narrative if they already have firm ideas about how stories should go.

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on July 02, 2020, 01:17:40 AM
I did wonder about whether you find any drama emotionally engaging, or if you're always distanced by the fiction.

Goodness me, I was only joking when I said I might be a psychopath. Yes I find drama hugely emotionally engaging, I am a big consumer of fiction, and I find the stories of both LOU games really engaging. That's their biggest appeal for me.

I just mean I don't think I feel more engaged by stories in games than I do in other media. You could argue that movies are just more engaging than novels, for example, because they are almost by definition more realistic as audiovisual sensations, but personally speaking I wouldn't say that's generally true, for me is. Likewise games feel like they should be more engaging because they're "more realistic" (you are "in!" the story), and yet it isn't really that simple.

Zetetic

I wasn't suggesting you were a psychopath! But "I thought: OK so Ellie is now enraged and has a clear goal, which is cool" suggests little place-taking or merging with her emotional state - when I think that's clearly what the game was intended to provoke.

I don't think I've said anything about realism - only emphasised the player's active role in playing out the story in TLoU. I've also tried to steer away from the idea of the player being "in" the story, in favour of continuing to use acting-out terms. The point is not that your doing things in the story, here, but you are actively bringing the story out. Perhaps "engaging" is not a helpful choice on my part here - you are made part of the process of telling the story, and I think that serves (not omnipotently) to drag you along with the view of the world and humans and violence that the story depends on. Playing your part is acceding to these things, in way that tolerating a hateful novel to see how it ends is not

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on July 02, 2020, 01:31:10 AM
I wasn't suggesting you were a psychopath! But "I thought: OK so Ellie is now enraged and has a clear goal, which is cool" suggests little place-taking or merging with her emotional state - when I think that's clearly what the game was intended to provoke.

Sure, but, again, no moreso than I would do with any other medium I think.

I mean, the people I'm describing on YouTube seemingly want to actually kill Abby themselves. I didn't, because she's not real. That sounds simplistic but that really is about as sophisticated a point as I'm making here.

Quote
I don't think I've said anything about realism - only emphasised the player's active role in playing out the story in TLoU. I've also tried to steer away from the idea of the player being "in" the story, in favour of continuing to use acting-out terms. The point is not that your doing things in the story, here, but you are actively bringing the story out.

Yes, I'm just constructing hypothetical arguments for how movies might be argued to be more engaging than novels. One such argument might be that movies have a more realistic sensation of "receiving" the story, since you can actually see and hear them, and therefore they have to be more engaging right? This seems to make sense, and yet that doesn't make them more engaging to me.

Likewise, games on paper should be more engaging/different/whatever because they're more active. You are actively teasing the story out by interacting with it. It's less passive than other media. And yet I don't think, for me, that really has profound implications about how I relate to its characters, as in the Abby example. It's perhaps a stupid thing to say, but you have to actively turn a page to continue a novel, too.

popcorn

Sorry to make this an explicitly A-level philosophy discussion but I have a very vague memory of Plato saying that actors who played bad people in plays were damaging themselves spiritually/morally, even though it was just pretend.

Zetetic

Quoteno moreso than I would do with any other medium I think.
Which is why I asked.

I don't think that the active role necessarily does change how you relate to characters, but I think 30 hours of agreeing with "the characters would do this now because that's how people are" has a kind of force that turning a few hundred pages doesn't. Not an irresistible force, but nevertheless

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on July 02, 2020, 01:49:23 AM
Which is why I asked.

I don't think that the active role necessarily does change how you relate to characters, but I think 30 hours of agreeing with "the characters would do this now because that's how people are" has a kind of force that turning a few hundred pages doesn't. Not an irresistible force, but nevertheless

But the nerds were also cross with The Last Jedi.

Zetetic

I'm not sure I understand the point.

popcorn

A lot of people were cross with The Last Jedi because Luke wasn't "their Luke" any more and did not make the correct Luke Skywalker decisions.
Spoiler alert
A lot of people are cross with The Last of Us 2 because Ellie did not make the correct Ellie decisions. She should have killed Abby because Abby is bad and that's simple.
[close]
I think they're the result of pretty similar nerdish thinking and I'm not sure the fact that LOU2 is a video game has informed that.

I know what you're saying and I don't think it's necessarily wrong. I just can't figure it out. It seems to make sense that a game, as a more active, involved experience, could have some not-so-hot implications for how we experience themes and messages and ideas. But I also am not sure that in practicality it does. I just can't make that leap from paper to practice.

Zetetic

I'm not sure it's even a matter of the subjective experience.

But, my original point was using the term "complicity". You're not deciding to make Ellie or Abby keep killing (even if you're determining individual deaths most of the time), but you are agreeing with the author that they would do (up until the point where they don't).

Edit: With that in mind, I don't think that the depiction of the violence is hypocritical, because the game doesn't have anything very serious to say about how the horribleness of violence is related to ending violence. Any empathy on the player's part seems to be wasted - it is functionless. Generous arguments might be made about Abby and Ellie's eventual decisions to stop (although what any of that means in the context of the avowed inspiration is harder to be kind about).

popcorn

Gonna need you to explain that more. (For a start do you mean "you" generically or "you" as in the handsome cool poster popcorn?)

Zetetic

Generically - any player.

You can't change the plot, but you're still choosing to read your part in the script.

(Perhaps you could  imagine that the player adopts an aggressively subjunctive attitude to the whole thing where they're constantly thinking "well, I'm not sure that would happen, but I better play my part to see what happens". Is that possible for 30 hours straight without hating the authors?)

popcorn

Quote from: Zetetic on July 02, 2020, 02:16:22 AM
Generically - any player.

You can't change the plot, but you're still choosing to read your part in the script.

But so what? You choose to turn the page too. What's the problem? Is it bringing the player closer to the experience of doing bad acts themselves or what?

QuoteYou're not deciding to make Ellie or Abby keep killing (even if you're determining individual deaths most of the time), but you are agreeing with the author that they would do (up until the point where they don't).

Still can't make sense of this

Zetetic

Quote from: popcorn on July 02, 2020, 02:22:48 AM
is it bringing the player closer to the experience of doing bad acts themselves or what?
No, I don't think so, certainly not in TLoU. It is bringing the player into the telling of the story.

The author says "Ellie does this" - and you make the Ellie-doll act out doing that.


popcorn

So what's your objection to da game?

Sheffield Wednesday

Quote from: Barry Admin on July 02, 2020, 12:59:59 AM
I checked your post history yesterday to see if you were okay after the Rona test. I saw this post and I'm none the fucking wiser tbh.

I'm all right, thanks. Two tests, still negative but I'm definitely still ill with something chesty as is my missus. We're fucking knackered, off work and I reckon probably got it. Defo on the mend, though. Tests are just dogshit. My cousin is a nurse, had four negative tests with symptoms but antibody test came back positive. I might end up just getting a couple of them online at some point.

Also, dunno how much you know about this game but that lunatic post is mocking the psychos who don't want their revenge fetish questioned or in any way subverted by it. They just want to kill the baddy because she made them feel bad. Sorry if I got too into character but I'm absolutely fine.

I think the outrage to this aspect of the game, ignoring its other failings for the moment, justifies what it's trying to do. Even if Zetetic and popcorn are emotionally disengaged by it, it has deeply affected many people who've played it - even if it's just made them angry that their psychopathic power fantasy has been stolen from them. I personally feel bruised and battered by it.

To be frank, I did enjoy the violence and bloodlust in the first ten or fifteen hours. I did hate the baddies and felt that I had carte blanche to do what the fuck I needed to do. And after that, it started to fold back in on me and I ended up feeling quite depressed and traumatised by what I experienced. It's an exceptionally violent game, the likes of which I've never seen. It's a very painful experience and while there is some redemption and catharsis in certain areas, it has largely left me emotionally drained. By the end of the game, I would have chosen to die rather than kill any more. It's flawed, sprawling, messy, but I think that driving the point home long past the moment that I'd already got it was in itself an important decision. I 'got it' pretty quickly, but I only felt it by being put through the wringer. I tried to start NG+ but I don't have it in me just yet. I will do, though, I'm certain.

Technically, it's the most refined photorealistic game ever made. An absolutely staggering achievement. On an OLED telly, blackout blinds, headphones, no interruptions, it's the best audiovisual experience I've ever had with a game. It's up there with Rez Infinite and Tetris Effect, as directly impactful on a pure sensory level but far richer and infinitely more varied. The lighting system in particular brings everything to life in a way I've never seen. The audio design is probably the best I've ever heard in a game. How many different surfaces and spaces do they have rain sounds for? Of course, that's inane in itself but as a fragmentary representation of the detail and sheer manpower and attention which has gone into this, it's unparalleled. Above all, though, it's just the most exhilarating and simultaneously crushing game I've ever played.

It will be hard for anything to beat this for my GOTY.

magval

I'm not going anywhere else on the Internet to read about this for reasons that Popcorn basically alluded to above in relation to the type of discussion happening elsewhere, so I don't have anywhere else to ask this fairly basic question about something that happens right near the end:

Spoiler alert
Is it supposed to be completely obvious that, because Ellie was bitten (but's immune) and Abby bit Ellie's fingers off that she's gonna go crazy on that boat and kill Lev in an hour or so? Or does the virus not work that way? Might it NOT happen?

And if that IS the case, then don't the complainers still get to know that Abby's gonna die, anyway?
[close]

Timothy

Magval:

Spoiler alert
Not sure but I didn't see it that way. I just saw them riding into the sunset, together, onwards to TLOU3. Interesting way to look at it though.... you might be on to something
[close]

popcorn

I think
Spoiler alert
if that was supposed to be the implication, or a possibility, they would have alluded to the idea. But they don't really. I think Ellie losing her fingers is just a way of linking the physical cost of her journey to her emotional cost, dramatised by her playing guitar with her knackered hand at the end. It reminded me of a similar thing in The Subtle Knife.
[close]

Bazooka

I would have been happy with either outcome, at the end of it all, I'd enjoyed cutting all the foes like fish, even if the last fish got away. Luckily Naughty Dog are smart and let you skip cut scenes so a second play though on survivor, can skip all the filler.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Bazooka on July 02, 2020, 11:05:14 AMLuckily Naughty Dog are smart and let you skip cut scenes so a second play though on survivor, can skip all the filler.

You can, but then there's quite a lot of story bits that aren't cut-scenes that you can't skip. I started New Game+ yesterday and it was about half an hour before I was into the proper gameplay, skipped cut-scenes and all.

popcorn

Don't see myself replaying any time soon but was thinking it would be good if there was an option to replay specific encounters.


Zetetic

Quote from: Sheffield Wednesday on July 02, 2020, 08:53:06 AM
Even if Zetetic and popcorn are emotionally disengaged by it

That's absolutely not the case for me. I think they're very well written in the details, alongside their extremely high production values in every other way - they clearly represent the pinnacle of particular kind of game.

I wouldn't be nearly so disappointed and exercised by them otherwise.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: popcorn on July 02, 2020, 11:22:51 AMDon't see myself replaying any time soon but was thinking it would be good if there was an option to replay specific encounters.

Yeah, I don't really feel up to experiencing the heavy story again so soon, hence the cut-scene skipping, but I felt like I wanted more of the enjoyable gameplay, and get a chance to continue to upgrade stats and weapons which New Game+ gives.

I think you can actually replay chapters and encounters if you want to.

Harpo Speaks

I'm seeing a lot of phrases and terms such as 'bad storytelling', 'plot holes' and 'out-of-character' being thrown around in relation to this game, and when viewed in the context of their overall criticism, it seems what they actually mean is 'this character or story did not do what I wanted them/it to do'.

Still, that stuff is practically a palate cleanser for some of the more bigotry fuelled hate I've seen towards the game.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Harpo Speaks on July 02, 2020, 12:07:26 PM
I'm seeing a lot of phrases and terms such as 'bad storytelling', 'plot holes' and 'out-of-character' being thrown around in relation to this game, and when viewed in the context of their overall criticism, it seems what they actually mean is 'this character or story did not do what I wanted them/it to do'.

Still, that stuff is practically a palate cleanser for some of the more bigotry fuelled hate I've seen towards the game.

It's quite alarming isn't it? The sense of entitlement is astounding. Plus some of the comments make it clear that they haven't played the game and are purely basing their vitriol on what they've read elsewhere. I quickly got to the point where I'd rather bury my head in the sand and avoid reading any more discourse on the subject than be depressed by what some people believe is acceptable conduct.

We can only hope that it is a vocal minority and the quiet ones are busy actually enjoying the gripping story and tight gameplay.

brat-sampson

Wider discourse around the game has been pretty upsetting. A combination of pure misogynistic/homophobic bigotry, mixed among people who just didn't like *the events* of the story rather than having any actual critique of the plot itself. Like fans of a show getting upset at a finale when their preferred ship aren't matched forever. In the face of that, actual criticism is harder to voice, because the assumption becomes that you're just a member of the previous camps. I also think Spoiler Culture has made discussion of the nuances even harder, just because of the fact that the most aggrieving factors of the plot are themselves enormous spoilers, meaning they can't be easily and openly discussed until after the game has washed over the wider crowd.